Re: “Corbett budget revenue problem”
Isn’t Newslanc more than a little disingenuous? Hasn’t Newslanc argued strenuously for greater debt knowing that future generations would have to pay for it?
EDITOR: One last time…hopefully.
If the government, federal or state, borrows money to build a bridge, it has debt but it also has a bridge
Under CRIZ, money is borrowed to benefit a private hotel, for example. The state has to pay for it out of future tax revenues, but the state does not own the hotel. It is privately owned!
Got it?
I’m afraid readers will not get it. An investment in a toll collecting bridge will, over time, pay for it’s construction and maintenance. A bridge, minus tolls, is much less clear as a state investment although some people are very good at rationalizing the goodness of the investment into dollars, i.e., the state owns the bridge but so what, the bridge is not paying for itself.
EDITOR: One more time: The “state” is us. We own the bridge. We get to use the bridge that we paid for. We don’t have to pay a private party to use the bridge that we paid for.
While at this point I cast a jaundiced eye at CRIZ, I have been told that CRIZ money is not for building anything but is for example, reclaiming and rehabilitating land that developers find unuseable for development due to environmental shortcomings. For example, chemically contaminated soil; reclaiming an illegal dump site etc. If CRIZ is another cousin to the convention center fiasco it should be rejected. Difficult to do in the crony capitalist driven country we live in.
EDITOR: That may be the theory. But if Lancaster Square East is an example, it isn’t what is happening. Use of the money to avoid razing the Bulova Building and to turn the former Brunswick into a competitor to the City owned Marriott ( leased to Penn Square Partners) is a boondoggle for special interests and just plain stupid as public policy.